


mirror on the ceiling

by hoverbun



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Dream Sex, M/M, Selfcest, Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator, Voyeurism, voyeurism of the self
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:54:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29979729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoverbun/pseuds/hoverbun
Summary: Cruelty has a Human heart,And Jealousy a Human Face,Terror, the Human Form Divine,And Secrecy, the Human Dress.
Relationships: V/Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Kudos: 14





	mirror on the ceiling

There is no exchange of gestures, or sound of heels to the floor. There is a bed; unmade, dark sheets, with bodies. Human bodies. Horribly, regrettably, human bodies. 

The floor beneath is old wood and the walls have streaks of age and dew at the baseboard. Up stretches the walls, which might hold paintings, or shelves, or other things tucked away to mark the presence of humans. It is beyond his image. He is within the ceiling, or perhaps he _is_ the ceiling. How unbecoming, to become inanimate in unholy suspension. Houses hold souls, however carved open they are. There lives, within, a living soul, however unwilling it is.

The bodies are joined together by limbs. They lay in slumber coiled around the other. He recognizes every unpleasant appendage and is forced to remember their names. Fingers, elbows, shoulders. Legs, knees, shins. They are not nude, but they are cast in shadow, with the moon’s silver cast over flesh. There are no windows, for the glass blew wide so long ago; yet he sees the blue hue over a shoulder, milk and ice skin carved through with black ink. The moonlight does not linger, and sways like a water’s reflection beneath the surface.

Eyes, black, with a stare that flicks across what they see as if there was verse written across. Beyond and past. So human. Mystery is not brought on by lack of sense, merely curiosity. The air is cold, but he feels a heat that rises; an open fire in winter. He is bound; there is no escape from the scorching hearth of humanity.

This one stares, forward, facing his bed partner who remains cloaked in shadow. The moonlight shifts their bodies, with an illusion of their bodies becoming one. Where flesh touches, it joins; as the seconds pass, so does the illusion. His partner’s features are obscured, and never meet the shifting moonlight. In the heaviest part of his being, he knows it is for the best.

Only one of them is breathing. All is well. Shadow envelops the other and brings the familiar silent shift all dreams possess. The living one is laid on his back. He is beautiful.

The shape of a body does not define its humanity. A home is alive. A body can live. So when he sees hands roam, he does not fear the implications. He instead watches the other man, the one whose skin is painted in sweeps of ink, shaped like clots of blood and the swell of fire. His fingers rake down skin that sheds ash, staining his fingertips and catching under his nails. He watches him rub the shape of bones beneath skin. 

Passion is not an exclusive experience of humanity. But he hears him whisper a hush, something that could almost be encouraging, and it carves panic through him, however briefly. How harrowing it is to care. How repulsive it is to fear. The two are kissing. He knows he should not be present. Who wishes to voyeur a pulsing heart embracing a corpse?

His hands are brought above his head. The corpse (for what else could he describe it as? Exuviae, sloughed from flesh humming with power?) is led forward, stealing the breath of its bed partner, swallowing whole and devouring him. There is no sound when it brings its body down and moves their bed. The black sheets shroud their movements, but there remains the peek of skin when the living manifest rolls his body to adjust. His hands remain above his head. The hungry shadow keeps him pinned by his wrists.

No matter how he tries, he cannot will the figure of shadow into something monstrous. There is the curve of his spine; the stretch of his torso; the streak of silver in hair. Closing his eyes changes nothing. There is nothing to hide; there is only a soul as bare as the living body below, held down and pressed into by the last memory of their shared vessel.

The faceless shadow—for a name is as sour as the truth of humanity— lowers its head to the black sheet by its partner’s head, moving at an unfamiliar pace. It grunts and speaks in no language to the other man. He does not close his eyes and await pleasure; the man looks up, and he stares with such consuming intent, and it is the second pang of panic that he remembers, for Vergil is ripped from his prison by a heavy weight into the corpse below, snapping his spirit back into place.

Sudden and all-consuming heat swallows him whole. It is all so abrupt, bringing body to action. The stretch of his back tingles from the nails raked down his spine. His knees ache, pleasant and wholly in service, from kneeling over his bed partner. His cock is buried deep, and it is all of those living nerves rejoining, bones joined with bones, that makes him revel in a new, complete, first breath. Deep in his lungs.

Legs remain tight around his hips. Was the body before simply being guided? Vergil lifts his head and stares as the one he is within. The other man has not forgone his smile. Curved small and kept private, hidden away; just for him.

"'Sweet joy to thee,'" he recites. Vergil sees only his own eyes.

No sound passed his lips as he settled within. It is all in the pleasure of the one beneath him, who he services with a firm rhythm of his hips rolling forward, pressing the weight of his cock as far as his other half can take him. Each stroke is an admittance of failure, guilt that manifests as regret for the Self. He fucks the other with a vengeance, but each sink to the root feels like his own personal loss. He is not yet prepared for the union of love and acceptance; but he plays with the push and pull of longing, for he grips the hips of his sunk cost fallacy and fucks him until the closed-tooth smile breaks and he starts to tremble.

Every hush he offers is like cold wind in his ears. And yet, Vergil lowers his head back down, forehead to the other’s and mouth grazing the other, both of them breathing and panting and so disgustingly alive. He feels himself drawn to that heat, something beyond the inherent warmth of being alive. It is personal. It is familiar. It feels good to press against. Vergil draws his bony hips into his own and feels his partner’s legs tighten around him, drawing him through.

His voice sounds good. It matches his own throes, curling snarls under his breath with open eyes to match an longing stare. He fucks him open yet neither limb nor breath roams far from their union, pressed together until their cores form a shapeless union. Vergil fills the body beneath him with himself in all forms, as his familiar eyes lead him forward, through the clawing resentment that tries to hold on to him.

Vergil’s hands move upwards, gripping his body and drawing it in with every reach, until his hands curl under those narrow shoulders cast in blue and he swallows him whole. The errant soothing he’s been offering cuts into a yell, the fear of letting go doused in desperate desire. It feels good to hear. The furious part of him is thrilled to shatter kindness; the selfish part of him loves to hear his performance isn’t lacking. He is firm with his ministrations, pulling down and pushing up to fuck him properly, better than any shade could. The way his partner clenches around him tells Vergil he fucks him through a savage climax, coiled and taunt as his nails find his skin and his knees press in tighter.

The haze of the dream is not enough to break his focus; Vergil pistons his hips, faltering in his vocal control and revelling in the moment of a primal growl. The erratic clenching around his cock provides a thrilling tightness, as if his partner tries to draw him. He finds his release when he surges forward and pressed his hips flush to the narrow curve of thighs, the furtive need to mate and claim leading him to press firm into the wanting body, swallowed by heat and filling it with himself.

He does not lift himself from the other. Vergil remains still, bare skin to shadow, cock inside a tight hole. The only one who breathes between them is the man he lays above, whose spider-hands ghost along his back, tracing the shell patterns across his own skin. It burns Vergil’s skin.

The other’s mouth moves, but all that passes is air. When Vergil opens his eyes, he once more bears witness from above. The man embraces a familiar shape of shadow, staring up with lidded eyes.

The heat disappears from Vergil’s skin. He feels no selfish comfort around him, nor within. Before he can rip his arm from whatever invisible binds suspend him, the room vanishes in black ash, and he is once again alone.

**Author's Note:**

> all poetry quoted is, naturally, from william blake:
> 
> \- summary is an excerpt from "a divine image";  
> \- "sweet joy to thee" is a line from "infant joy", the same poem V recites to dante in dmc5


End file.
